Wordpress can be made pretty safe, but the default install is subject to all sorts of mischief and malicious twiddling. And the plugins are the Achilles Heel of Wordpress, no doubt about it.
There are, however, several good plugins that can be used to harden Wordpress, most notably is one called 'Wordfence'. I don't do many WP installs but for me it's absolute must-have plugin; it has loads of options to harden the system.
Outside of that, do all the usual stuff- move the config file, make it read-only, don't use gobs of sketchy plugins, and exercise some restraint with what you do install. The fewer the plugins, the better. Use long, ugly passwords, no 'admin' user, etc etc etc.
There are actually quite a few things that can be done to secure Wordpress, although I'd be the first person to say that the end user shouldn't have to do those things- they should be baked in as defaults.
I'm on the verge of abandoning Win 7 (which I actually like) and moving over to Linux Mint.
I've got it installed (dual boot) on a laptop and it rocks. So far I've kept MS from 'upgrading' my PC to Win 10, but the moment that happens, *boom* I'm gone.
In fact I'll probably switch before then, but for the moment as long as my venerable Win 7 install keeps running I'll use it.
However, as soon as I buy a new bit of gear that doesn't have Win 7 drivers, that'll be the reason I jump ship (assuming that the new gear will work under Mint).
So basically it's just a matter of time until I switch....
The real headline should be, "Microsoft Losing Ground"
For the last decade most of what they've done has been either miserable or an outright disaster...Windows Me, Vista, MSN Messenger, the Zune, the Kin, the Windows Phones, Windows Mobile, Win 8 and 10, the Surface tablet, Bing, their app store....they're doing well with Azure but not a lot else.
What could go wrong with voice-activated dollars departing my wallet?
That was the very first thought that came to mind when I heard this...followed by, "Oh great, another completely unecessary way for my money to be stolen."
It has happened to magazines (like the Byte magazine which in the mid 80's was almost all ads) where the magazine turned from a small interesting magazine to a huge ad-book with a few articles that weren't far from being ads themselves.
Yeah, I remember when Byte went from an moderately informative magazine to little more than an ad-delivery system. 100 pages per issue and 75 of them were ads. And yes, the "articles" were basically product placement devices with almost no informative content except for the recommendation to "buy this awesome product!"
PCMag went the same route, 80% ads and a few shit articles that rarely had anything interesting to say, except for John Dvorak and his weird, random habit of bolding some words that he felt were important, but which just confused everyone else.
This reminds me of that ass-clown Jamie Kellner (chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting) who claimed that using your DVR to skip commercials was like stealing:
"Because of the ad skips, It’s theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you’re going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn’t get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you’re actually stealing the programming."
That's odd, because I don't remember signing any contract that says I have to watch commercials.
Apparently this also applies to going to the bathroom during commercial breaks. If you do that, you're stealing!
So in response to John Whittingdale, I'll give him the exact same response I gave to Jamie Kellner, and that was, "Fuck you."
I run some ad-supported sites, and if they die off because the visitors use ad-blockers, so be it. "Them's the breaks." In short, no one owes me anything, and if my site visitors decide to use an ad-blocker, that's fine with me.
I'm more worried about the casual way they talked about injecting something the size of a paperclip into a vein.
Some veins are large enough to handle this. Catheters are often routed through veins and some of them are about the diameter of the wire used in a paper clip.
But still....yeah, it doesn't sound all that attractive.
As I type this, the license link on the product's page leads to the variant of the Creative Commons License, that explicitly allows commercial use
I was wondering about that too. I thought perhaps I misunderstood the license or had missed something, but on the face of it, it seems like what they did was legal (perhaps a little sleazy, but still legal).
If someone more familiar with this could explain specifically what they did that was infringing or illegal, I'd be interested to know what it was.
Indeed, the abuse possibilities of a direct brain interface are illustrated in the episode of Black Mirror called White Christmas, which I think is a marvelous piece of science fiction.
I liked Black Mirror, I wish they had made more episodes.
Check out The Diamond Age for some of the upsides and downsides to neural wetware. Lots of benefits, but also lots of potential horrors and abuses.
admittedly, I expressed it in a roundabout and snarky way rather than directly
Yeah, you did.
is that fear of tech is harmful, and that resistance to tech is futile.
I'm neither afraid of tech, nor resisting it. I've embraced technology all my life, and helped advance it considerably by enabling researchers to use some of the most advanced tools on the planet.
I've helped heart research, helped integrated circuit fabs make better, smaller, faster chips, helped material science researchers develop new processes, contributed to biosciences around the globe, helped other scientists in nuclear research, and plenty of other stuff. For example, if you have a heart stent (or ever need one), you can thank me, yes, me to some small degree. I've helped cancer researchers and pharmaceutical companies to develop better drugs and treatments.
I helped create safer airbags back in the 80s and 90s. I helped Intel and AMD and Motorola and Fairchild make better, cheaper ICs. I helped LLL and Westinghouse Hanford and GE Vallecitos work with all sorts of radiological processes. I helped Lockheed and Boeing and Northrop Grumman make better aircraft and better radar emitters. I've helped universities all over the US do research into pollution and environmental effects. And plenty more beside those things as well.
I'm no longer in the role of directly supporting research scientists, but trust me, I did my part and then some for 20+ years.
-
Human brains will go online.
And I'm all for it. I'd love to have a brain interface that could adjust my vision, hearing, body temp, etc etc etc. I'd love to have the kind of neural implants that are described in books like The Diamond Age. I'd love to have uploadable memory. I'd love to have all that stuff.
At the same time, I'm not unaware of the dangers that it would bring, both personally and in a larger sense some of which are also described in books like The Diamond Age. Just because I comment on it or point out potential downsides doesn't mean I'm against it. On the contrary, it means I'm thinking ahead.
And unless you'd be happy with the same level of "security" and rampant hacking that has been the hallmark of the connected age (IoT devices, anyone?) that might be applied to your brain, you'd be a fool not to think about it to.
And what I said had everything to do with your over simplification of the bible and anthropomorphizing God.
The bible is the book that anthropomorphizes god to an endless degree, not me. I don't believe in such utter silliness, so I couldn't possibly equate humans (something real) with "god" (something demonstrably not real).
So please, don't waste your breath, go find some simple-minded folk to push your fairy tales on.
Does the bible have nuance? Of course it does, just like "Green Eggs And Ham" does.
Real world human examples: I've walked away from people I love because they were self destructive -- not only self destructive, but they were taking down people with them and I had no power to stop or assist.
So have I, so what? I've walked away from people and jobs and entire social circles because they did things I couldn't justify or because they promoted practices I felt were harmful or destructive or racist, so fucking what? All that makes me is human.
In some cases after leaving I actively worked against them, and again, so what? It has nothing to do with the myriad lies told in the bible.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously. No backup?
"We're Microsoft, trust us with your data, hurr durr."
Wordpress can be made pretty safe, but the default install is subject to all sorts of mischief and malicious twiddling. And the plugins are the Achilles Heel of Wordpress, no doubt about it.
There are, however, several good plugins that can be used to harden Wordpress, most notably is one called 'Wordfence'. I don't do many WP installs but for me it's absolute must-have plugin; it has loads of options to harden the system.
Outside of that, do all the usual stuff- move the config file, make it read-only, don't use gobs of sketchy plugins, and exercise some restraint with what you do install. The fewer the plugins, the better. Use long, ugly passwords, no 'admin' user, etc etc etc.
There are actually quite a few things that can be done to secure Wordpress, although I'd be the first person to say that the end user shouldn't have to do those things- they should be baked in as defaults.
You should have composed your blog post in a separate text file, copy and paste into WordPress editor, and finalized the blog post.
Whoosh!
Enlightenment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
That a bunch of geeks who know very little about how to operate economy would fail at trying to create one.
^^^^ This is probably the most insightful comment on this entire subject.
Put another way, "Good intentions, bad results." Like when I asked my plumber to help with my heart transplant.
No, I won't care because I don't use Windows.
I'm on the verge of abandoning Win 7 (which I actually like) and moving over to Linux Mint.
I've got it installed (dual boot) on a laptop and it rocks. So far I've kept MS from 'upgrading' my PC to Win 10, but the moment that happens, *boom* I'm gone.
In fact I'll probably switch before then, but for the moment as long as my venerable Win 7 install keeps running I'll use it.
However, as soon as I buy a new bit of gear that doesn't have Win 7 drivers, that'll be the reason I jump ship (assuming that the new gear will work under Mint).
So basically it's just a matter of time until I switch....
The real headline should be, "Microsoft Losing Ground"
For the last decade most of what they've done has been either miserable or an outright disaster...Windows Me, Vista, MSN Messenger, the Zune, the Kin, the Windows Phones, Windows Mobile, Win 8 and 10, the Surface tablet, Bing, their app store....they're doing well with Azure but not a lot else.
Is there an actual bug in EDGE's PDF viewer, or are we just saying software can have bugs and that people will try to exploit those bugs?
In a word, "yes".
So they are talking about a possibility of exploit and not an actual exploit....
Oh well as long as it's only a possibility then there's nothing to worry about and we should all just move along, nothing to see here...
What could go wrong with voice-activated dollars departing my wallet?
That was the very first thought that came to mind when I heard this...followed by, "Oh great, another completely unecessary way for my money to be stolen."
It has happened to magazines (like the Byte magazine which in the mid 80's was almost all ads) where the magazine turned from a small interesting magazine to a huge ad-book with a few articles that weren't far from being ads themselves.
Yeah, I remember when Byte went from an moderately informative magazine to little more than an ad-delivery system. 100 pages per issue and 75 of them were ads. And yes, the "articles" were basically product placement devices with almost no informative content except for the recommendation to "buy this awesome product!"
PCMag went the same route, 80% ads and a few shit articles that rarely had anything interesting to say, except for John Dvorak and his weird, random habit of bolding some words that he felt were important, but which just confused everyone else.
This reminds me of that ass-clown Jamie Kellner (chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting) who claimed that using your DVR to skip commercials was like stealing:
"Because of the ad skips, It’s theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you’re going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn’t get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you’re actually stealing the programming."
That's odd, because I don't remember signing any contract that says I have to watch commercials.
Apparently this also applies to going to the bathroom during commercial breaks. If you do that, you're stealing!
So in response to John Whittingdale, I'll give him the exact same response I gave to Jamie Kellner, and that was, "Fuck you."
I run some ad-supported sites, and if they die off because the visitors use ad-blockers, so be it. "Them's the breaks." In short, no one owes me anything, and if my site visitors decide to use an ad-blocker, that's fine with me.
"In 300 meters, shoot left."
"...recalculating..."
"In 200 meters, throw hand grenades right."
"...recalculating..."
"Arriving at ambush location, on right."
Ha ha, no worries here, I don't use SSL on my sites!
Oh, wait...
I'm more worried about the casual way they talked about injecting something the size of a paperclip into a vein.
Some veins are large enough to handle this. Catheters are often routed through veins and some of them are about the diameter of the wire used in a paper clip.
But still....yeah, it doesn't sound all that attractive.
"...Kiddle.co filters its results so that only 'safe' sites are displayed..."
Every few years something like this comes along and it always ends up being an abject failure.
The fact is that effective censoring is difficult, especially when the subject matter is fluid and subjective.
As I type this, the license link on the product's page leads to the variant of the Creative Commons License, that explicitly allows commercial use
I was wondering about that too. I thought perhaps I misunderstood the license or had missed something, but on the face of it, it seems like what they did was legal (perhaps a little sleazy, but still legal).
If someone more familiar with this could explain specifically what they did that was infringing or illegal, I'd be interested to know what it was.
Indeed, the abuse possibilities of a direct brain interface are illustrated in the episode of Black Mirror called White Christmas, which I think is a marvelous piece of science fiction.
I liked Black Mirror, I wish they had made more episodes.
Check out The Diamond Age for some of the upsides and downsides to neural wetware. Lots of benefits, but also lots of potential horrors and abuses.
admittedly, I expressed it in a roundabout and snarky way rather than directly
Yeah, you did.
is that fear of tech is harmful, and that resistance to tech is futile.
I'm neither afraid of tech, nor resisting it. I've embraced technology all my life, and helped advance it considerably by enabling researchers to use some of the most advanced tools on the planet.
I've helped heart research, helped integrated circuit fabs make better, smaller, faster chips, helped material science researchers develop new processes, contributed to biosciences around the globe, helped other scientists in nuclear research, and plenty of other stuff. For example, if you have a heart stent (or ever need one), you can thank me, yes, me to some small degree. I've helped cancer researchers and pharmaceutical companies to develop better drugs and treatments.
I helped create safer airbags back in the 80s and 90s. I helped Intel and AMD and Motorola and Fairchild make better, cheaper ICs. I helped LLL and Westinghouse Hanford and GE Vallecitos work with all sorts of radiological processes. I helped Lockheed and Boeing and Northrop Grumman make better aircraft and better radar emitters. I've helped universities all over the US do research into pollution and environmental effects. And plenty more beside those things as well.
I'm no longer in the role of directly supporting research scientists, but trust me, I did my part and then some for 20+ years.
-
Human brains will go online.
And I'm all for it. I'd love to have a brain interface that could adjust my vision, hearing, body temp, etc etc etc. I'd love to have the kind of neural implants that are described in books like The Diamond Age. I'd love to have uploadable memory. I'd love to have all that stuff.
At the same time, I'm not unaware of the dangers that it would bring, both personally and in a larger sense some of which are also described in books like The Diamond Age. Just because I comment on it or point out potential downsides doesn't mean I'm against it. On the contrary, it means I'm thinking ahead.
And unless you'd be happy with the same level of "security" and rampant hacking that has been the hallmark of the connected age (IoT devices, anyone?) that might be applied to your brain, you'd be a fool not to think about it to.
Your point?
If you don't see my point, explaining it probably won't make it any clearer.
Yes, you can hack my phone. But I can turn my phone off or get a new one.
-
while the rest of us journey to new cognitive frontiers, self-actualizing in an existence that you can barely imagine.
Yes, I'm sure that will be happening any moment now. Will you be able to pay for all that self-actualization in bitcoin?
I'm positive that an interface directly into your brain could never be abused, hacked, or compromised.
Let's not be coy...we all know what this Corporate DoubleSpeak means.
"resource actions" = "firing people"
"workforce rebalancing" = "firing people"
"rightsizing" = "firing people"
"personnel adjustment" = "firing people"
You're clinging to the bible quite a bit for a non-believer.
The reason I'm a non-believer is precisely because I've read the bible.
Not that I would ever suggest doing something like this, but they could end up being released into the wild anonymously.... *cough*
And what I said had everything to do with your over simplification of the bible and anthropomorphizing God.
The bible is the book that anthropomorphizes god to an endless degree, not me. I don't believe in such utter silliness, so I couldn't possibly equate humans (something real) with "god" (something demonstrably not real).
So please, don't waste your breath, go find some simple-minded folk to push your fairy tales on.
Does the bible have nuance? Of course it does, just like "Green Eggs And Ham" does.
Because it's that simple, right?
According to the bible it is.
-
Real world human examples: I've walked away from people I love because they were self destructive -- not only self destructive, but they were taking down people with them and I had no power to stop or assist.
So have I, so what? I've walked away from people and jobs and entire social circles because they did things I couldn't justify or because they promoted practices I felt were harmful or destructive or racist, so fucking what? All that makes me is human.
In some cases after leaving I actively worked against them, and again, so what? It has nothing to do with the myriad lies told in the bible.